18 Cadence is an experiment in interactive narrative, asking you to build something from pieces of story.

There was a house at 18 Cadence Street. It was built in 1900. It burned to the ground in the year 2000. In between, people lived there: soldiers, mothers, bankers, stoners; people with secrets, with chores, with dreams, with regrets, with too much stuff or not enough, with sleepless nights, with laughter and with each other.

In 18 Cadence, you can explore a century of living and assemble your own story from thousands of narrative fragments. Capture one life or juxtapose people from different eras. Slide, position, and recombine details like magnetic poetry. Decide what's worth telling, and what should be left out. What story will you tell?

Features

Explore seven interwoven stories of American families across the 20th century

Written and designed by award-winning interactive fiction author Aaron A. Reed

Smart fragments that can describe themselves in different ways and in relation to each other

Browse the best stories created by other readers, and share your own stories

Collect your favorite stories (iPad only)

How To Explore

Touch the map of the house to move through its rooms, and the forward and back arrows to move through time. The tabs under the descriptive text let you see events from the perspective of each character involved. Drag any text onto the workbench to manipulate it: tap to vary, drag onto other fragments to combine, or use the razor blade to split combined fragments. The Options ribbon in the bottom right lets you view and share stories.

If you enjoy the browser version and would like to support the developer, check out the Estate Sale.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the many people who gave me feedback during the development of 18 Cadence, including Duncan Bowsman, Sherol Chen, Kate Compton, Sharon Daniel, Teale Fristoe, Jacob Garbe, Chaim Gingold, Paolo Gomes, Jennifer González, D. Fox Harrell, Chris Lewis, Michael Mateas, John Murray, Ben Samuel, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. The project uses Creative Commons images from Flickr users petercat.harris, Playingwithbrushes, Theresa Thompson, and viscousplatypus. The jQuery, jQueryUI, TouchPunch, and Cordova frameworks were used in the development. The fonts used are IM Fell DW Pica and Simonetta.

18 Cadence was supported in part by the Florence French Financial Aid Fund for Art and first appeared in prototypical form at the 2011 Digital Arts & New Media MFA show at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Visit aaronareed.net for more work by the author.

“What else is it possible to change if not the past? The future is nonexistent, the present come and gone too quickly to establish a mailing address."